Hello all...I need some of your expert advice. I have been an avid pizza creator now for about a decade, focusing my attention on NY Style and Neo-Nea's. But I have been asked (almost begged) by my brother-in-law to come up with something he considers his favorite pizza - Godfather's thick crust. Do not berate me for his choices of favorites...just please help me!!! I'm looking for a baker's percent recipe for such a crust. I'd also love to see a sauce and cheese blend recipe.

There have been a few feeble attempts to come up with a Godfather's clone pizza, which you can read about by doing a forum search, but no one has succeeded to date and, for sure, no baker's percent versions.

I think your best bet is to try to come up with the weight profile of the desired "original" Godfather's pizza. For example, a large (14") Godfather's pepperoni pizza weighs around 43 ounces unbaked, and perhaps a few ounces more unbaked. Using around 10 ounces of mozzarella cheese, about 6 ounces of pizza sauce and about 2.5 ounces of pepperoni slices leaves a dough weight of around 27 ounces. You can try plugging that value into the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html along with the baker's percents given at Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4607.msg38909.html#msg38909 and follow the instructions given at http://www.pizzamaking.com/panpizza.php. If you'd like, you can substitute a partially hydrogenated fat (shortening) for the oil in using the expanded dough calculating tool. You will need to use a bromated flour so you should keep that in mind.

With the guidance of Peter, I'm on it. I'll break out my abacus and get to work on it over the weekend. I'm planning on a trip to Godfather's this afternoon to grab a pie as I haven't had one for over a decade. I'll post with my first experiments hopefully on Sunday...

With the guidance of Peter, I'm on it. I'll break out my abacus and get to work on it over the weekend. I'm planning on a trip to Godfather's this afternoon to grab a pie as I haven't had one for over a decade. I'll post with my first experiments hopefully on Sunday...

You might want to take notes of as many observations as possible, from the characteristics of the finished crust, how the pizzas are baked (e.g., in pans, on stone/screens), type of oven, bake time (if possible to measure), etc.

I must say that a recent stop at my favorite Godfathers, yielded some of the best tasting Godfathers that I have ever had. They had a Middleby-Marshall or Marshall-Midleby conveyor oven. I believe that the thermo was set at 475*. I am pretty sure that the oven is an impenger (sp). All pizzas that I saw, cooked in a pan. She said 8 minutes.The regular crust pizzas were good, but the original crust pizza was excellent.(last picture)

Picture of flour.Picture of Leprino Foods mozz (frozen) The sauce was pretty thick and was spicey. Salt content was appropriate. Good stuff.

Thank you for contributing to the cause. You seem to have an uncanny ability to unearth things. How did you get the latest information?

Leprino Foods is perhaps the largest supplier of mozzarella and other cheeses to the U.S. pizza trade, including Papa John's. Leprino is not a supplier to the retail trade. So, for cloning purposes, one would perhaps choose a quality low-moisture part-skim or whole milk mozzarella cheese, either block or shredded (which is likely to include one or more ingredients to reduce or prevent clumping). Were you able to tell from the flavor, texture or richness (mostly fat content) which of the two forms of mozzarella cheeses Godfather's used on your pizzas?

From the flour bag information you provided, I would say that the flour is perhaps a bromated GM flour with a relatively high protein content and likely milled from a blend of hard red spring wheat. GM does not use potassium bromate for its all-purpose flours or its winter wheat flours. The fact that the flour bag lists only flour ingredients suggests that the dough is made at the store level. From the document I previously referenced at http://vegan.fm/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Ingredient-Statement.pdf, we know that the yeast is dry and the shortening component is also dry (an encapsulated spray-dried partially hydrogenated soybean oil). Of course, the salt and sugar are also dry. The sorbitan monostearate that is added to the yeast is an emulsifier that coats the yeast cells and protects them from damage by oxygen and assists in the rehydration of the yeast. I believe that the sorbitan monostearate is most commonly used with instant dry yeast (IDY), or at least I have not seen it used with the ADY that I have in my collection. So, if I were to guess, I would say that Godfather's uses IDY. From the pecking order of ingredients for the dough, I would conclude that a fair amount of yeast is used, because of its high location in the ingredients list. Otherwise, the salt content would have to be at below usual levels. That is a possibility that can't be ruled out at this point.

Thank you for contributing to the cause. You seem to have an uncanny ability to unearth things. How did you get the latest information?

Were you able to tell from the flavor, texture or richness (mostly fat content) which of the two forms of mozzarella cheeses Godfather's used on your pizzas?

Peter

The flour bag and empty Leprino box were in file 13, behind the store.

No. But if i were forced to guess... Screamin' Mimi's said they only used mozz. From looking at the pictures I took from there, with sauce and cheese only, some oil does look present on the top after cooking. If that was oil (fat content) from the cheese at SM's, then these had none. So I would guess, based solely on that theory, that the Godfather's was part skim.

I should have updated this quite some time ago, I apologize for my laziness. Prior to my clone work, I went to the local Godfather's and ordered all three of their crusts - the guy thought I was nuts since it was just me and my 7 month old daughter. I can report that all three, and unfortunately their classic crust leading the pack, were three of the worst pizzas I've ever had. I decided to tell my brother-in-law to find a new pizza as his favorite...because this was not going to get my work / attention! Sorry!!!

Godfather's sold out to Pillsbury around 1984, and from that time on their pizza has never been the same as it was in the old days, largely due to the crust. In order to recoup their money from buying the company, Pillsbury naturally made them use their flour products, which were inferior to their previous product ingredients. To this day, they still tend to use products that are of lesser quality. I ate at a local Godfathers a couple of times a few years ago, but it was disappointing an experience as The PB described. We still have a couple Godfather's restaurants in the KC metro area, but most of them have closed. There used to be a strictly delivery version of Godfather's near my house a few years ago, and that pizza reminded me more of the old Godfather's crust. I suspect it was a franchise operation. Unfortunately they caved under the pressure from local Domino's and PH and went out of business less than 2 years later.

I should have updated this quite some time ago, I apologize for my laziness. Prior to my clone work, I went to the local Godfather's and ordered all three of their crusts - the guy thought I was nuts since it was just me and my 7 month old daughter. I can report that all three, and unfortunately their classic crust leading the pack, were three of the worst pizzas I've ever had. I decided to tell my brother-in-law to find a new pizza as his favorite...because this was not going to get my work / attention! Sorry!!!

ThePizzaBiatch,

Thank you for your response. All too often members beg for clone recipes of their favorite pizzas, present or past, and appear willing to offer up their next born child for the recipe, only to disappear and never return to the forum again, even after a lot of work has been done to come up with a clone recipe. I don't think that there is a single clone thread on the forum where the person who begged for a clone recipe stayed around long enough to see the final results. Since I have done more clones than anyone else on the forum in response to requests from members, I perhaps should have had reason to be irritated when the members didn't care to stick around long enough to see the final results. But, some of my best learning experiences, not only with respect to dough formulations but also of business practices used by some of the major and regional chains, have come from my reverse engineering/cloning efforts.

I think if you follow my suggestions as given in Reply 1 in this thread you should be able to come up with a pretty decent thick-crust pizza for your brother-in-law. But that is your call.

I'm up for the challenge, and you read my mind. I logged on to see what your rendition of pan pizzas were. Any modifications you'd suggest to get as close to the "old GF" style? Also, their cheese was always interesting to me, any ideas on the type / weight of those. Hell, sauce suggestions welcome as well! This is very new to me...so, I'm going for it.

To be clear, the dough formulation presented below is not intended to be a clone of the Godfather's dough, which you indicated did not meet with your satisfaction during your last visit to one of the Godfather's stores. Rather, it is a version of the Pizza Hut pan style dough as described at http://www.pizzamaking.com/panpizza.php but modified to try to emulate the form factor (dough weight/pizza size) of a 14" original Godfather's pizza dough.

There are similarities between the modified PH dough and a Godfather's original dough, but there are also differences. For example, the PH clone pan dough includes dry non-fat milk. The Godfather's dough does not. Also, there appears to be more salt in the Godfather's dough and less sugar (in the form of regular sugar and corn syrup solids) than in the PH clone pan dough (which includes only regular sugar). There is no reason why the PH clone pan dough cannot be modified to get it closer to the Godfather's dough if you later decide that you would like to move closer to the Godfather's dough. The Godfather's original dough also includes partially-hydrogenated soybean oil, which appears to be in a spray form so that it can be incorporated with the rest of the dough ingredients (other than the water) to form the dry pizza mix that apparently is used in the Godfather stores to make the pizza dough. You could use a hard fat like shortening as an alternative to the liquid oil (soybean) used in the PH clone pan dough. In terms of the yeast, I believe that Godfather's uses IDY in their dough rather than the ADY that is used in the PH clone pan dough. There is no reason why you can't substitute the IDY for the ADY. Finally, the Godfather's dough uses a bromated flour. I do not know whether it is bread flour or high-gluten flour (I tried to find out from General Mills but they would not tell me because that information is proprietary), but if possible you might want to use a bromated version of whatever form of flour you decide to use. To refresh your memory on what goes into the Godfather's original dough, see the document at http://vegan.fm/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Ingredient-Statement.pdf.

Note: No bowl residue compensation; if a baker's grade form of dry non-fat milk is used, use 2 3/4 t.*Preferably bromated

For preparation instructions, I suggest that you follow the instructions given with the PH recipe referenced above. I might add that the Godfather's dough appears to contain a lot of yeast. That suggests a same-day (possibly few-hours) dough rather than an overnight cold fermentation. If you know whether Godfather's uses a same-day dough, that information should be useful in the event you decide to modify the PH dough to also be a same-day dough.

For cheese, I would use a shredded low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese. That is what Jet_deck noted earlier in the thread as his guess on the form of the cheese. The Godfather's shredded cheese (from Leprino's, which supplies only the pizza trade, not individuals) also contains powdered cellulose to prevent caking. This is one of those rare cases where you might want to use a shredded mozzarella cheese with such an additive if you want to emulate the Godfather's cheese protocol. Or, you can improve upon their results by using a high-quality mozzarella cheese without any anti-clumping additives. That cheese could be a low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese, or whole milk mozzarella cheese if you prefer that, or even a combination of both forms of mozzarella cheese. For the amount of cheese, I would go with 10 ounces.

For the pizza sauce, Godfather's uses a simple sauce of: Tomato Puree (Tomato Paste, Water), Salt, Spices, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Citric Acid. If you like the Godfather's pizza sauce and decide to try to reproduce such a sauce, you will want to use the same pecking order (it is by weight) of the ingredients as noted above. That means that you will perhaps have to go light on the garlic powder and onion powder. You shouldn't have to add any citric acid because that most likely comes from the tomatoes used to make the sauce. At this point, we don't know who supplies the Godfather's pizza sauce. For the amount of sauce, I would go with around 5.5-6 ounces.

If pepperoni slices are used, I would use about 2 ounces worth.

It would help if you weigh the unbaked pizza and the baked pizza, as well as the weights of the dough, cheese(s), sauce and pepperoni (if used) that you decide to use. That information may tell us if we are close on the Godfather weights.

Peter I am willing to take a stab at your above formulation, this weekend. Without any Carnation dry-non fat milk on hand, can you wiggle your magic want and give me a version with canned evaporated milk? Not condensed sweetened but plain ole evaporated milk. a quick search says that evaporated milk is homogenized milk with 60 percent of its water removed. Thanks if possible.

Peter I am willing to take a stab at your above formulation, this weekend. Without any Carnation dry-non fat milk on hand, can you wiggle your magic want and give me a version with canned evaporated milk? Not condensed sweetened but plain ole evaporated milk. a quick search says that evaporated milk is homogenized milk with 60 percent of its water removed. Thanks if possible.

Jet,

As you may have noticed, the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html does not include canned evaporated milk as one of its possible ingredients. Nor am I aware of any conversion of liquid canned evaporated milk to a dry form, which I assume exists somewhere in the food universe. So, we will have to take a different approach.

According to the nutritiondata.self.com website, at http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/141/2, one-half cup of canned evaporated milk weighs 126 grams. Of that, the water represents 93.3g/126g = 74.05%; the balance, which I will call the "solids", comes to 25.95%. So, for one-half cup canned evaporated milk, 93.3g is water and 32.7g are the solids.

Now, in order in order to determine how much canned evaporated milk is needed to get 10.84 g of milk "solids" as called for in the dough formulation I posted, we will need (0.5 x 10.84)/32.7 = 0.16575 cups of canned evaporated milk. That amount of canned evaporated milk weighs (126 x 0.16575)/0.5 = 41.77g. Of that, the water portion comes to 30.93g.

To modify the dough formulation I posted, you would reduce the amount of water from 256g to 256g-30.93g = 225.07g, and you would add 41.77g [(126 x 0.16575)/0.5] of canned evaporated milk to the dough formulation. The ADY, salt, sugar and oil ingredients will remain the same. The milk "solids" from the canned evaporated milk will substitute for the Carnation dry milk powder.

You might want to double check my math to be sure that I calculated everything correctly.

The milk "solids" in the canned evaporated milk won't be exactly the same as a dry equivalent product but I suspect the differences are not likely to have a material effect on the final product. You may also find that you have to tweak the amounts of ingredients to achieve the normal, expected results in terms of dough consistency and feel.